Golden Eagle Abundance in Alaska: Migration Counts and Movement Data Generate a Conservative Population Estimate

Estimating species density and abundance is challenging but important for establishing conservation management strategies. Significant progress has been made toward estimating Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in the conterminous United States of America (USA) much less known about eagle Alaska. Here, we paired migration count GPS-tracking data collected near Gunsight Mountain, Alaska, a Bayesian framework to estimate number Eagles south-central We estimated 1204 (95% credible interval: 866, 1526) potentially breeding (≥4 yr old) annually moved through Mountain corridor summered over an area 150,325 km2 equating 0.80 eagles/100 km2. By extrapolating across species' nesting range Alaska (1,180,489 km2) incorporating published productivity age-specific survival rates eagles <4 old into our hierarchical model, 12,717 9043, 16,349) all ages occur annually. propose this as conservative statewide population because used methods that likely underestimated size. Even so, three five times larger than previous estimates represents one quarter USA's population.